Chapter 225: Motherly Instincts
Lidia carried Enny over to a table and laid her down gently. Her beaths were soft and short while her forehead was burning hot. Lidia began to prepare a small treatment for her while Slimo talked about something they had mentioned before the fight.
"Lidia, we should continue our conversation from early about the nature of these Zalo powers."
Lidia grabbed a cold bucket of water a small clean cloth.
"I’m listening."
"Let’s take this girl for example. What does she have influence on in this world? Does she have any?"
"How can we know? She was leading an entire army."
"That’s true but the army had nothing to do with anything. What about the Zalo users we killed in the battle? They didn’t seem to be accomplished."
"Well then maybe it doesn’t have to do with influence at all."
"Well, if that’s the case, why give powers away in the first place? Nothing is making any sense."
A scary thought suddenly smacked Slimo in the head.
"Lidia, I have an uncomfortable theory, but I’m not sure how accurate it is."
Lidia laid a cold cloth over Enny’s forehead.
"Go ahead."
"What if Zalo isn’t who we think he is."
Lidia’s face turned slightly.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, everyone emphasizes him to be some massive deity of the past, and they are also saying his body was infected with corruption upon his passing. However, what if Zalo was already corrupted when he passed?"
"What are you getting at?"
"If Zalo was a corrupted Deity, and he passed off these powers to the divine and profane trio, wouldn’t that mean the powers themselves are corrupted?"
Lidia thought to herself for a moment, then suddenly, her heart dropped.
"Squabee’s description of her power..."
"What about it?"
"How she shouldn’t exist. It all makes sense, Slimo. Squabee is someone who is immune to corruption, yet her own power is corrupted. It’s a paradox of inexplicable consequence. It’s no wonder the world has no idea what to do with her! Can you even imagine the laws of a deity clashing against itself?!"
"What about your power? Isn’t yours a bit paradoxical as well?"
"What if my new power wasn’t a power gifted from Zalo? Who says that Zalo is the only being capable of passing down great power? Don’t you remember what that statute said?"
Slimo’s face dropped.
"The serpent statue."
Slimo fell to his knees and grabbed his head. His injury from the battle he had earlier was still not healed, so thinking clearly was still a struggle for him. Lidia grabbed his arm and slowly lifted him up.
"Please, sit down to speak. You aren’t fully healed yet."
Slimo stumbled forward and sat at on the same table Enny was laying on.
"What the hell happened in the past? Why isn’t there any records of this?"
"If Zalo truly was corrupted, there is no doubt he manipulated the masses to his favor, making him seem like the true benevolent god. That would mean even textbooks would have been forged in his favor."
"Well, if Zalo was one of the Gods, then does that mean the other two were the Great Serpent and the Frost Monarch?"
Lidia went silent for a few moments.
"We really don’t have anything to come to that conclusion yet. However, that brings up other pressing questions. Who the hell built that statue in the first place? Are there other statues just like it? The person who wrote the writing in the statue claimed to be a friend of Zalo, so should we really trust him? And if the builder was a friend of Zalo, why would he imbue the statue with an essence that directly opposes his power? What if he didn’t even build the statue and simply wrote a message on it?"
Slimo slumped over the table.
"It just feels like we ended up with more questions with answers in the end."
Lidia smiled and scoffed.
"Nothing new there, unfortunately."
"I think there is one thing we can say for sure though."
"And what would that be?"
"If the Great Serpent was really the one to give me these cleansing powers, that means their power was a direct opposite to Zalo himself. But that also makes me wonder what kind of power the Frost Monarch possessed."
Slimo groaned.
"Let’s just call it there for today. I think my head it going to explode."
Lidia walked over to Slimo with a clean rag and laid it against his wounds while giving him a small kiss on the cheek.
"Well, if you didn’t smack yourself so hard in the head, you wouldn’t be hurting so much now, would you?"
Slimo sighed.
"No."
"That’s what I thought."
Lidia slowly walked back over to Enny, resting on her own hand while she watched her.
"She really does remind me of Maria a bit. At least how Maria used to be. I can’t believe they led her into battle with a fever."
"Maybe she volunteered to go despite her fever. What are we going to do with her, Lidia? Surely the only reason you didn’t kill her is because she reminded you of Maria."
"Well, that was the biggest reason, but I think her power could be useful to us, especially for blocking supply routes. Hey, wait a minute! She probably blocked some of ours now that I think about!"
"Or we just got unlucky with the weather."
"You seriously think it’s normal to blizzard in fall?"
"I don’t know. Maybe on other continents."
"Well, we aren’t on other condiments now, are we?"
"It’s conti-... never mind."
Slimo rested while Lidia was put in charge of nursing everyone back to health. Sarah cooked everyone a massive meal, something that she hadn’t done in quite a while. Even so, the meal turned out amazing. The soldiers were begging for seconds after quickly demolishing their first round of food.
"Is there anything the Butcherer cannot do?! This is incredible!"
"I want thirds!"
"My mouth is in heaven. I can’t seem to stop eating!"
Sarah giggled and began to clean her station.
"You should see Captain Slimo cook. He is the only person to ever come close to outclassing my work!"
All the soldiers looked at Slimo in shock.
"Captain can cook?!"
"No way! She has to be lying!"
"Yah! I thought he had chefs do the cooking for him?!"
Sarah nodded her head.
"When he lived by himself, all he would do was cook for himself. In fact, I would argue he is much better than me at making something out of nothing. I feel that skill is a much more valuable boon compared to simple culinary technique or skills"
All the soldiers continued to stare at Slimo in awe.
Lidia was holding two steaming bowls of soup next to the unconscious woman. The fever, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to be breaking. Lidia cursed to herself, held the woman up with one arm, and force-fed her the soup.
"Even if you can’t, you have to eat. Please forgive me if you choke."
Surpassingly, the woman’s body allowed her to take small swallows between spoons of soup. It took thirty minutes before Lidia had finished feeding her. Enny’s face seemed much more relaxed and at peace than before.
Looking at her figure, Lidia was almost sure that the emperor was not feeding his soldiers what they needed to be eating. She suspected that was a major reason why this fever was being so stuborn in the first place. She looked at Slimo with wistful eyes.
"Do you mind if she sleeps in our bed tonight?"
Slimo shook his head.
"I don’t mind at all. I can keep watch outside. Would you like to keep me company?"
"I think I want to watch over the girl just in case she wakes up. I don’t want her to panic."
"Fair enough. I can keep watch myself then."
"I’ll join you."
Sarah walked over with her axes sheathed on her back.
"I don’t think I trust you to be at your best with that head injury healing. No offense."
"None taken. I understand."
"What is the plan for tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow, we will regroup at Paria’s main kingdom to discuss strategy with Avala. Do you have the whistle to call Harold?"
Sarah pulled out a small, enchanted whistle that was tucked inside her blood-soaked cloak.
"Good. We can save some time by taking the cart."
"I wonder how the others did on their Epigone missions. To be honest with you, Lee was really worrying me at training last week. He just seemed out of it."
"I mean, he disappeared for over a week out of the blue. He must be dealing with some personal things as Steel has told us before."
"I will have Steel try talking with him again to see if we can make sure that he’s alright. I just don’t want him to be down or anything."
Slimo scratched his chin.
"Have any of you heard about the new wall yet?"
Sarah shrugged her shoulders.
"I know that Lucy was training with that blacksmith for a while, but I didn’t know she actually attempted it."
"Well, she was supposed to attempt it while we were all fighting our battles these past few days. We can see how she did when we get back."
Sarah shook slightly.
"Knowing Lucy, the Empire is in good hands."
"Well, she does have Bart with her to help her out."
"Without his help, she wouldn’t be able to forge her new famous black iron. I’m going to make her start paying for everything as soon as her patent gets approved. She’ll have customers drooling over her products for miles! Including me!"